Visalus Review: Weightloss via monthly shake kits

Visalus launched way back in March 2005 and operate out of California in the US.

The company markets weight-loss products and was co-founded by Blake Mallen and Nick Sarnicola. Visalus also list Ryan Blair as a co-founder, but from what I can tell he joined the company post-launch. Blair currently serves as Visalus’ CEO.

Normally I have to do my own research into a company but with Visalus being as old and established as it is, the Visalus Wikipedia entry (with cited references) provides a detailed synopsis of the company’s history:

ViSalus Sciences was incorporated as a Troy, Michigan-based limited liability corporation in March 1997.

The company was founded by Nick Sarnicola and Blake Mallen, who were, at the time, distributors for another multi-level marketing company called The Free Network—a firm that went under because it provided obsolete services in long distance calling, dial-up Internet access, and paging.

After The Free Network folded, Mallen and Sarnicola devoted their time to promoting ViSalus in Northern California.

In October 2008, Blyth, Inc. announced that it was acquiring ViSalus in a takeover, initially purchasing a 43.6% equity interest for $14.0 million.

Blyth completed the second phase of the takeover in April 2011, investing an additional $2.5 million and increasing their ownership share to 57.5%.

After the company was purchased by Blyth in 2008, it almost went bankrupt. Ryan Blair, a former gang member and the current CEO of Visalus, invested $1 million in the company and eventually led its turnaround to $34 million income in 2010.

In September 2011, ViSalus opened up their business to Canadian residents.

Blyth, Inc. is a Greenwich, Connecticut based marketing and manufacturing company that sells personal and decorative products.

The company reported having 4,000 employees as of January 2007 and is incorporated in Delaware. In 2001, it was the largest candlemaker in the United States.

If you’re curious about Ryan Blair’s gang-related history (as I was), you can read more about it in Krikus Reviews’ review of Blair’s 2011 book, “Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain”:

millionaire entrepreneur Blair tells his compelling story: a troubled street kid overcomes a broken home and a drug-addled father to amass a vast fortune before the age of 30.

As tantalizing as that history is, however, the author never really digs into it here beyond referencing his time as a somewhat incongruous Southern California gang-banger.

Readers hoping to learn exactly how a scrawny white kid from a formerly stable middle-class life transformed himself into a hard-edged hoodlum—only to renounce it all—will be somewhat disappointed.

Rather, Blair provides a course in Entrepreneurism 101 with a rather vague and ill-defined human-interest back story for inspiration.

As Krikus note, it’s definitely an interesting backstory, but unfortunately most of the specifics remain unclear. Having been around the MLM publicity block a few times the cynic in me can’t entirely brush it off as a somewhat embellished marketing hook.

That said, apart from sheer curiosity Blair’s past won’t be a focal point in this review and I don’t consider it significant to the business operations of Visalus.

Read on for a full review of the Visalus MLM business opportunity.

The Visalus Product Line

As mentioned previously, Visalus market a series of products in the weight-loss niche:

Global Ambassador – have at least five Ambassador 5 Stars, three must be in separate legs, the fourth and fifth can be within previously counted legs

Note that from Regional Director onwards, only 60% of qualifying GV can come from any one unilevel leg (explained below).

Residual Commissions

Visalus use a unilevel commissions structure to pay out residual commissions to their associates.

A unilevel commissions structure places you at the top, with each associate you personally recruit placed directly under you in a new lineage leg (your level 1).

Any associates your level 1 recruit form your level 2 (they are placed under the associate in your level 1 who recruited them) and so on and so forth.

Using this commissions structure Visalus pay out a monthly residual commission on the sales efforts of your downline.

How many levels in their unilevel an associate is paid out on depends on their membership rank:

Associate – 5% on levels 1 and 2

Director – 5% on levels 1 to 4

Regional Director – 5% on levels 1 to 6

National Director – 5% on levels 1 to 7

Presidential Director and Ambassador – 5% on levels 1 to 8

Note that each associate’s sales volume in your downline that goes towards an Associate’s qualifying GV for the month is counted on an individual sliding percentage scale, based on how much BV they are personally generating:

Leadership Depth Bonus

The Leadership Depth Bonus extends residual monthly commissions in your unilevel. Upon achieving the Visalus membership rank of Ambassador, an associate qualifies to earn 2% on the Business Volume earnt by all associates on levels 9 and onwards in your unilevel team.

Additionally, if an associate in an Ambassador’s downline qualifies for the Ambassador rank themselves, they earn an additional 2% (raising the total to 4%) on the first eight levels of that Ambassador’s unilevel team.

For example, if an Ambassador’s unilevel team extends down 20 levels and an associate on level 12 achieves the Ambassador rank, the initial Ambassador will earn 2% on levels 9-11 of their unilevel and then 4% on levels 12 to 20.

If their unilevel extended beyond level 20 at a later date, they’d be paid the regular 2% rate on those levels (untill a new Ambassador qualified on those levels).

First Order Bonus

Visalus’ First Order Bonus is paid out on the first order made by a new Associates (made at the time of initial recruitment into the company).

The Visalus First Order Bonus is an upline bonus, paying up 4 levels of enrollment:

Recruiting associate – 20%

2nd upline recruiting associate – 10%

3rd and 4th upline recruiting associates – 5%

Fast Start Bonus

The Visalus Fast Start Bonus is paid out when a new Associate signs up with an Executive Success System ($499-$999).

The compensation material is a bit vague, but as far as I can tell each Executive Success System generates $180 in Fast Start Bonuses that are paid out to an upline according to membership rank.

Associate – $50

Director – $100

Regional Director – $130

National Director – $155

Presidential Director – $170

Ambassador – $180

For example, if an Associate recruits a new Associate who purchases an Executive Success System, they earn their $50 Fast Start Bonus. The system then searches the upline of the recruiting Associate fo a Director or higher member to pay out the rest of the $180 Fast Start Bonus to.

If the system finds a Director, it pays out $50 ($100-$50) and keeps looking for a Regional Director or higher to pay the remaining bonus out to (deducting what has already been paid out to qualifying Associates below).

If the there was an Ambassador immediately above the recruiting Associate, the system would pay out the full amount, sans the initial $50 paid out to the recruiting Associate ($180-$50 = $130 paid out).

There is also a matching generational bonus paid out, which is a fixed dollar commission paid out when any Associate in a downline is paid out a Fast Start Bonus and is of the same membership rank as the qualifying Associate.

Regional Director – $15

National Director – $10

Presidential Director – $10

Ambassador – $10

For example, if you were a Presidential Director and another Presidential Director in your downline qualified for a Fast Start Bonus, you would receive a $10 commission.

Rising Star Weekly Enrollers Pool

To qualify as a Visalus Rising Star, new Associates must join Visalus by purchasing an Executive Success System package ($499-$999), and then reach the rank of Director within 30 days of joining (3 personally recruited “active” Associates and a GV of 2000 or more).

Associates who qualify as Visalus Rising Stars are then able to participate in a company bonus pool, made up of 2% of global BV over the previous 4 week period.

The Rising Star Pool payout is 25% of this pool paid to qualifying Rising Stars weekly and according to how many shares they have in the pool.

Rising Star shares must be qualified for weekly, with each share holding an equal value proportion in the weekly bonus pool:

achieving Rising Star qualification – 3 shares

3 new associates recruited (min $500 GV) = 3 shares

3 new preferred customers (min $500 GV) = 3 shares

every additional $490 GV over $500 GV for either associates or preferred customers = 3 shares

Note that Regional Directors or above are also able to qualify for shares in the Rising Star bonus pool, regardless of whether they qualified as a Rising Star in their initial 30 days or not.

I believe the “achieving Rising Star qualification” shares are only offered upon initial qualification as a Rising Star and thus only qualify for 1 week of shares in the Rising Star Pool.

The other three share qualifications are weekly recurring and do not stack from week to week (each week your shares reset to 0).

Leadership Pool

Visalus put 2% of the global company volume into a Leadership Bonus Pool, which is split into two separate pools, a Presidential Director Pool and an Ambassador Pool.

Shares in the Leadership Pools are based on how many Director or higher associates an associate has in their unilevel team.

Director – 1 share

Rising Star Director – 2 shares

Regional Director – 5 shares

National Director – 7 shares

Presidential Director – 10 shares

Ambassador – 15 shares

Note that only the highest rank member in any given unilevel leg is counted for the allocation of shares. A unilevel leg is defined as a personally recruited associate and the entire downline under them.

Ambassador Star Bonus

The Ambassador Star Bonus pays Ambassador Star associates a commission for each associate they have in their downline that is paying a monthly “Vi-Net Pro” subscription ($29 a month).

For each Vi-Net Pro subscription Visalus pay out $12, with how much an Ambassador earns dependent on their membership rank.

Ambassador 1-4 Stars – $2 per subscription

Ambassador 5 Stars – $1 per subscription

Ambassador 1 to 3 Star associates also earn a $1 “override” commission on the subscription bonuses earnt by Ambassadors in their downline.

Commissions are paid out dependent on rank with the system searching for a higher qualified ranked associate until the entire $12 commission has been paid on each subscription.

Eg. If an Ambassador 2 Star is the first Ambassador found in an upline, the system will pay out $4 and then keep searching for a higher qualified Ambassador in the upline to pay out the remaining $5 ($2 + $2 + $1) to.

BMW Car Bonus

Upon reaching the membership rank of Regional Director, Visalus associates qualify for a $600 a month BMW car bonus.

Associates who don’t wish to receive a car bonus can alternatively opt for a $300 a month cash bonus.

Joining Visalus

Membership to Visalus starts at $49 for basic membership and two Executive Sales Sytems at $499 and $999. Both Systems come with a range of Visalus products, with the $999 System containing more than the $499 version.

Conclusion

Undoubtedly Visalus has a strong product line-up, with the company touting itself as having the “#1 weight-loss and fitness challenge in America“.

Forming the base of their marketing campaign, this “challenge” is used to market Visalus’ products with a series of “kits”. These kits contain different combinations of Visalus products and range in price from $49 to $299.

Compensation plan wise, there is a foundation of business volume underlying most of the plan but there are still a few points of concern.

Retail commissions wise, with the whole fitness challenge marketing angle, there’s a strong emphasis on getting out there and finding customers to take the challenge.

What I don’t like about Visalus’ retail commissions however is that they include product bought by the associate. There is a 70% rule, stating that

Seventy percent (70%) of products obtained from ViSalus must be retailed or consumed before reorders are made.

With associates able to purchase product direct from the company (and earn qualifying volume on these purchases), how Visalus ensure 70% of this product is actually sold (or consumed) by an associate isn’t clear.

Although it’d be easier to find customers to purchase product directly from Visalus, I don’t see what’s stopping an associate purchasing product themselves to qualify.

Moreso when you consider that Visalus drop the “active” requirement by $75 if an affiliate buys the product they need to qualify as active themselves. One would think it’d make more sense to have a lower retail sale than self-consumption limit.

I also wasn’t too keen on the diminishing returns counted for upline qualification on an associate’s BV. The more product an associate sells, the less of their BV as a percentage is counted towards the residual commissions paid out through the unilevel.

Raw volume will probably mean more is counted but with the overall percentage dropping 20% at each retail commission percentage increase (10%, 15%, 20% and 25% all result in a reduced BV commission percentage for upline commissions), I imagine it’d be a bit disappointing (until additional volume made up the difference).

The Rising Star bonus at first glance strongly resembles a recruitment bonus but the 3 associate recruitment requirement isn’t such a big deal when you consider this is the maximum required for much of the membership ranks. Sooner or later if an associate wants to advance past the basic Associate level they’re going to have to recruit 3 Associates of their own.

In that sense the Rising Star qualification just acts as an incentive for those wishing to advance faster as an associate.

When you consider that after the initial qualification you’re then looking at BV, upon the initial cycle the Rising Star Pool qualifications shift to focus on sales.

The fact that the Rising Star Pool is open to Regional Directors and higher also prevents it from being seen as a straight recruitment bonus.

Other than that, with a maximum of three associates required for recruitment to advance in the Visalus compensation plan, the remaining qualification focus is sales.

The unilevel cap at 8 levels is interesting as you can’t extend that unless you hit the Ambassador membership level. In order to qualify as an Ambassador you’re looking at $150,000 GV – which is a lot of product sales (especially when you consider the reduced sliding scale each associate in your downline contributes as they increase their PV).

And given the figures required, I’d say it’s definitely more of a significant requirement over the recruitment requirements. Especially when you consider the recruitment requirements remain static while the Group Volume amounts increase with each rank.

All in all marketing Visalus seems easy enough. I don’t imagine there’d be too much to explain to potential customers, much the less having to convince them whether or not they need to worry about their health and weight.

One thing that might be a problem (and I’m not sure how Visalus approach this) is customer retention. It’s easy to sell the idea of “keeping the weight off and remaining healthy” but once people meet their goals customer retention might be a problem. Something to think about in the long-term.

Depending on your price point, with $49 a month being the cheapest option to evaluate Visalus as a customer, I’d strongly suggest taking at least one month to evaluate Visalus’ products and see if they work for you. Marketing wise the “body by Vi” challenge will help but nothing hits home like a personal testimonial with demonstrable results.

31 Comments on “Visalus Review: Weightloss via monthly shake kits”

The 70% thing is a part of “Amway Safeguard Rules” that usually makes the FTC stay away… unless the company has been found to not enforce them (i.e. paper-only compliance).

My main concern is all these different bonuses and blah blah. It’s confusing as heck. Not quite as bad as Sisel, but multiple commission, multiple “bonuses”, AND multiple pools? Come on.

IMHO, the more complicated the comp plan, the more likely the company is tilting the comp plan in its favor instead of the affiliate’s. I’d want to see some sort of a breakdown on just how many affiliates qualify for each way to earn (i.e. how many out of total affiliates manage to “cash in” on each of the different ways to earn and average earned).

This caught my attention as I was doing my routine morning check on the site to see what Zeek news was out…your site is my one-stop shopping for everything, including breaking news, etc. If only I had found you months ago, things would have been different.

I did what I thought was due diligence at the time…as a newbie to MLM, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. For the most part anything that came up as Scam related to Zeek was actually a website linking to an affiliate’s page where Zeek was touted as the grestest thing since sliced bread.

For anyone considering any MLM right now, as a hard-working regular person, successful business person, in fact, please, please, stop before you do anything. READ EVERY MESSAGE THAT THESE GUYS POST ON THEIR SITE FOR MONTHS BEFORE YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT JOINING.

This thing has enough red flags to tick off a herd of bulls, no thousands of herds of bulls. My instinct would be to “Run for the hills.” But that’s because I’m still smarting from what’s happened this last week.

Consider getting involved with organizations, esp MLM’s, that have histories of scam, fraud and downright organized crime at their head. These guys jump from company to company.

This one may be different. I’m still new at all this. All I do know is I’ve been following BehindMLM since Friday, haven’t missed a post (think they are now up to 1000 on the thread about dissecting the Zeek fraud.

All I’m saying, people, don’t fall for anything. I posted something yesterday about left-brained vs. right-brained folks. I’m a right-brained person…they prey on us because we hate “due diligence”, the boring, methodical process of critical thinking.

Instead they flash paychecks, fancy complicated comp plans because they know we are too focused on “helping our friends” to notice what the left hand is doing while the right hand is robbing us blind.

Just slow down and remember, if it sounds to good to be true, it is! I’m telling you it is…. it is….. it is…..!!!! I have friends’ lives ruined over Zeek.

You are in for a heartbreak of legal issues, lost friendships if things go really bad. Think, people, think. Rely on the guys at BehindMLM to do the critical thinking, ready their analyses and make your decision.

I was in this one for about a month. Joined shortly after I joined Zeek as at that time I actually in that ‘build your business’ mode..

This one I can say is not an outright criminal organinzation, but after about two weeks I realized that the only way this company can stay in business long term is to have a high percentage of affiliates drop out after a relatively short time, at a loss. A basic churn and burn business model.

In fairness, I will say that their Vi-Shape product was delicious! But as for any sort of weight loss benefits, lol!

Thanks for putting this together, didn’t expect it so quick.:-) As I said in my initial request I did as much as I could looking at this for the past few weeks. Let me start with some of the information I’ve been going through and will probably help other people looking into this also.

Some quick history for those joining this thread.I’m a customer of Visalus – working out well. I do have previously successful history in NM, haven’t built in about 5 years but do keep up with everything going on in the NM world.

Winner DSA turnaround award 2010 (nothing to do with comp plan but is an indication of revenue growth. So that was $34 million to $231 million fiscal 2010-2011 and apparently that upwards trend is continuing through 2012.

I’ve not been part of a company that’s public before and I know they are owned by Blyth so I don’t have any concern re revenue.I see they are now registered to do an IPO separating them as a standalone from the parent company.

Re breakdown.I see reported that there are about 1.2 million customers.I would also like to see from somewhere verifiable the Distributor (they call them Promoters) to customer ratio.

I’ve only seen anecdotal evidence put out by the company itself and last I saw they were about 150K Promoters which appears like a great customer to Distrib ratio.

Would definitely like to see the break down of comp. level achievements per rank.I know they say (reported from media) that there is about 700 Ambassadors and it looks like tracking at least one a day.

From what I’ve seen in their in depth comp video the majority will sit in the Regional Director-National Director level which is fine as they purport to be the middle class company.

They are reporting new BMW qualifiers ever 45 mins/24/7.You are quite correct with the $12.5K GV volume to qualify with 60% rank criteria.

There is one thing to note though obviously the 12.5K has to be maintained and though there is a two month grace period should you fall below that, the advice I got was to take the cash until GV reaches a consistent $15-$18K per month for at least 4 months.

Otherwise if GV dips by over the 2 months cushion the Distrib will have to pay whatever the car lease/loan is for the next month.Seems in line with most of the other car bonus option companies out there.

OZ: : Moreso when you consider that Visalus drop the “active” requirement by $75 if an affiliate buys the product they need to qualify as active themselves. One would think it’d make more sense to have a lower retail sale than self-consumption limit.

I think this might have something to do with their 3 for free program???? 1. which is why there is no compensation under $200.Basically, if you are on a kit $99 and have 3 people on the same or higher kit your next month kit is free (only charged for shipping)

As far as I can tell this is one of their goals and they currently quote 40% of customers get their kits for free. From what I remember this counts in PV for the purposes of staying active per month which accounts, I think for the $75 spread between PV and Retail customers.

Incidentally, they extend the same offer to non-comp plan participants. Word of mouth thing….

Oz.: In that sense the Rising Star qualification just acts as an incentive for those wishing to advance faster as an associate.

Al: This one I can say is not an outright criminal organinzation, but after about two weeks I realized that the only way this company can stay in business long term is to have a high percentage of affiliates drop out after a relatively short time, at a loss. A basic churn and burn business model.

Hi Al, What’s your basis for this? How do you mean “not an outright criminal organization” ? Also what supports your churn and burn theory?

I’ve nuked the YT videos as they are full of affiliate links. If I’ve missed something or got the comp plan analysis wrong, feel free to point it out and we can go from there.

BehindMLM reviews however aren’t just an excuse to publish a bunch of Youtube videos covering the content in the review itself.

If they don’t add value to the review and discussion, what’s the point?

@Kasey

I did get a bit of a headache going over the Visalus comp plan but I think that’s because I started with the summary version (which looked fine) and then had a look at the full version, which added a lot more stuff.

I don’t really get the need for 15 membership ranks, infact most of the upper ones don’t even seem to have a purpose in the comp plan, other than for associates to be able to credit themselves with a pompous title.

@Claire

150K GV qualification or $250K?

Oops you’re right, it’s $150,000 not $250,000 GV, I’ll fix that up.

I think this might have something to do with their 3 for free program???? 1. which is why there is no compensation under $200.Basically, if you are on a kit $99 and have 3 people on the same or higher kit your next month kit is free (only charged for shipping)

I don’t see what that has to do with favouring associate internal consumption vs. retail sales for “active” qualification though, given that both count under the “3 for free” scheme.

If anything I’d have thought it should be the other way around (retail sales require less volume to qualify over recruited associate self consumption).

@ Dogman.Fair question but absolutely not.If I tried to find those particular YT videos again I probably couldn’t. As I said I have no idea who they belonged to but there were literally just to show the sequence of information and to see if I was missing anything on the comp. plan.

Though I am just a product user, (in fact I’m a product user of a few companies) if you read back you’ll see I was in NM before but not for about 5 years so I do have a history of looking at the comps & structure, albeit very rusty.

My youngest is hitting school shortly so looking to restart and this is one of two, perhaps three I’m looking into.

As @Zeek no more calls it, I’m a “left brain” person so I want dig deep into a comp. plan & it’s structure along with the way the business model is set up. My original inquiry to Oz was all about comp. plan so that’s why it’s the business end is being concentrated on here.

Again my apologies Oz re the YT vids, no spamming meant, I’m not like that, it was literally a search for their comp. plan in the YT search bar as I couldn’t find it on their site the last time I looked as they were changing site layout.

I’d seen them on video obviously before so knew they had to be there.

Thanks for your analysis. There are still parts of it I can’t particularly wrap my head around:

The $75 spread between on qualifications and the lowering % payout as you also mentioned.

Ditto on the amount of ranks although there are extra one off bonuses for achieving Ambassador, 3 star Ambassador (I think), 5* and the rest so that might be why so many ranks in the upper part of the plan …. it’s a lot to take in.

Same questions re retention for both customers and promoters etc. but haven’t seen anything official or verifiable apart from the stuff put out the Founders & Distribs.

Ok I’m going to have to go back through parts of it again to work it out because right now I’m scratching my head at some of it.

littleroundman: Do a quick Google for “The Legend of the Chessboard” and you’ll quickly see the “trick” involved.

Interesting, I’ve never seen that before. Wouldn’t that be dependent though on doubling at 100% each time? They say 40% get their product free… I presume that varies on a monthly basis. No idea mind you the internal breakdown of that between distribs and customers.

So if I’m correct based on say 50% per month cause it’s easier using 1 distrib and 3 customers:

The $75 gap is that you can either qualify as an “active” associate by buying $125 of product yourself (on autoship from memory), or selling $200 worth of product a month to retail customers ($75 = 200-125).

I think this should be the other way around as it’s definitely an incentive for self consumption over retail sales, which might hint at the greater driving force behind the rest of the business model, despite a retail option being available.

The lowering % equates to basically receiving less of a percentage of the total BV generated by an individual downline affiliate, as they increase their BV output that is counted in your unilevel team total.

Capped at a 60% reduction (only 40% is counted), the more BV they output the less of it percentage wise qualifies to count in your GV total (however raw volume wise it will be more).

Claire: Interesting, I’ve never seen that before. Wouldn’t that be dependent though on doubling at 100% each time?

It doesn’t need to be complicated, Claire.

1 person starts the chain.

He gets his “three”

Now you have 4 people.

Each one of the “three” wants his free.

So each of them recruit three

Now you have 13 people.

1 leader and 12 of whom are getting theirs’ “free”

The 12 all recruit 3

Now you have 37 people.

Get the point ??

The major point is, “get three and yours’ is free” cannot work for everyone involved. It’s the type of deliberate half truth spin doctoring which gets up my nose AND encourages the type of “endless chain recruiting” which brings MLM to the attention of the authorities.

There’s not enough people in the USA.

It’s actually worse than the Chessboard, the numbers jump by a factor of 3, not just the factor of 2.

It’s not necessarily a deal breaker, HOWEVER, as the saying goes, “knowledge is power” and, if you pay to join, it would be very handy to know exactly how many “get 3 and yours is free” members are between you and the founder.

I always hear about a PUSH call at the end of month which is the time that top leaders release their people from prior month from a “holding tank” and place them under people to boost those numbers to the people underneath them.

I heard of people not really recruiting but having huge bogus volume added after these end of month calls. Then all the promotions begin. Not really sure if this is legal and really dont believe that the Visalus numbers are accurate.

L, can you elaborate on that PUSH call you are talking about? Wouldn’t moving people further down the company’s downline actually make the company pay out more commissions? Why would it be bad if a promoter got extra volume?

And what makes it bogus? Isn’t the product still being sold?

Like others have said, I’m really interested in the churn/breakdown of levels of affiliates. Anyone have a clue?

Jason: Why would it be bad if a promoter got extra volume?
And what makes it bogus? Isn’t the product still being sold?

It’s not necessarily bad, it’s the fact that the people are “gaming the system” instead of improving sales. It’s like “lets give him enough volume so he qualify for GV bonus” instead of making him/her develope it through training his downlines. It encourages laziness.